


I'm an atom in a sea of nothing (looking for another to combine)

by thischarmingmutant



Category: Cloud Atlas (2012)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thischarmingmutant/pseuds/thischarmingmutant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars where we first kissed." </p><p>Sixsmith waits for their time to come, and he remembers, and dreams, and hopes beyond hope that Frobisher was right about a better world.</p><p>He was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm an atom in a sea of nothing (looking for another to combine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_ann_now](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_ann_now/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [I'm an atom in a sea of nothing (looking for another to combine)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1358725) by [kiii17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiii17/pseuds/kiii17)



> Written for Yuletide 2013, for the prompt "A happy-ever-after for these two. That's all I want." just_ann_now, I hope this satisfies :)
> 
> Title taken from lyrics to Gabrielle Aplin's "Start of Time."
> 
> Now kindly translated into 中文 by [kiii17](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1358725).

_I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars where we first kissed._

_Yours eternally,_

_R.F._

 

The words rolled over and over again in Sixsmith’s mind throughout the years, a record repeating, the thumbing of a rosary bead. _Another world, a better world, waiting, dead, do not stay dead._ As if he ever would have. Robert Frobisher had never in his life done a thing he did not want. Sixsmith supposed his friend would do the same in death – he had chosen when, after all, so who was to say he could not choose after?

Sixsmith believed. He _wanted_ to believe. He always had.

They had lain beneath the stars once, flush with wine and youth and Corsica in the summer. Sixsmith thumbed that picture in his mind many times, too, Frobisher with his wind-swept hair, his laughing eyes, strangely soft angles and lines as he propped himself up on his elbows. _Je t’adore_ , he had said, with that easy quirk of his lips that Sixsmith never could help but answer with a smile of his own, however unsure. Sixsmith had blushed then, eyes dropping to the blade of grass he had been twirling between his fingers. _Oh, come now, Sixsmith_ , Frobisher teased, _don’t be coy_. When Sixsmith looked up, Frobisher had leaned toward him, and their noses bumped. Frobisher had barely been able to let out a huff of laughter before Sixsmith pressed their lips together, and it did not matter that Frobisher adored everyone and everything. Sixsmith had loved that about him, even then, fiercely trying to drown out _je t’aime_ in his own mind and think only with his mouth. He had failed miserably, of course; his lips learned Frobisher’s, but his heart was a poor student. Sixsmith hardly knew what he had been getting into. But he dove into it without regret. He could never bring himself to regret.

He had often thought then that kiss had been the bravest thing he had ever done. That had, of course, been before blood and bathtubs and summoning the will to move beyond _waiting for you, dead, dead, **find me**_ and live.

Somehow, some way, Sixsmith had. And some days, it felt so _long_. He feared an eternal recurrence, this life over and over again with no release. He wanted the Corsican stars again, but not that last letter, however many times he reread it.

He had spent far too many years of his youth replaying it behind his eyes: how weeks before he had packed and unpacked his suitcase, how he had bought the train ticket twice, and how he really had felt as though that kiss had been the bravest thing he had ever done and ever _would_ do because he did not have it in him to go after Frobisher. Sixsmith laid awake so many nights after, imagining it had all gone differently: he got there in time, or Frobisher had never left, never met Vyvyan Ayrs, never found that gun. Once, Sixsmith imagined that he had never met Frobisher, but it did not bear thinking on; it was an impossibility. In an infinite universe, they were a fixed point.

Frobisher had not left him alone. Sixsmith ran his fingers over his letters until he could feel them like braille; until he could not anymore, their surface dulled over time. Until he no longer needed to, really, because for years now every word had been memorized. But still he kept them, still he read them, touched them with reverence, because they were _Frobisher’s_ , what Sixsmith had left of him, like the memory of his own skin under Frobisher’s fingers, the ink like fingerprints left behind. Frobisher had composed these words, alongside the trebles and notes, a foreign language he had likewise imparted to Sixsmith. The sextet was Frobisher’s, but these words were – _are_ – theirs.

 

But this, too, is a memory.

 

Sixsmith has traces of others still – the word _archivist_ heavy in his mind – but his and Frobisher’s story is the one that feels most part of him, in his DNA, in the stars, in Frobisher’s eyes as he looks into them now.

“Dearest Sixsmith,” Frobisher says, his lips curled up and twitching in laughter.  “It is so good of you to come.”

It is both strange and familiar, seeing him again. Sixsmith feels a faint taste of gunpowder in his own mouth before it floats away, like so much smoke, just one way he had left the world and entered it again. The only door that matters is the one that had opened into this world, this life; Sixsmith knows in his bones that this, now, is the eternity that Frobisher had promised him, so long ago and so like yesterday.

They are, indeed, under the Corsican stars again. But they lie side by side in the bed from that last night in Cambridge, and Frobisher wears Sixsmith’s waistcoat again, and nothing else beneath it. Everything about him is _whole_ – nothing of how he left the world, and nothing to make it feel like they are not _of_ the world. Sixsmith had only ever begun to entertain thoughts of something beyond the mortal coil for their sake, and he had never thought that they would take these forms. But here they are, because otherwise would simply be an impossibility. Love: the most natural, the most powerful, of phenomena, after all. Sixsmith had told his niece once that love could outlive death. It had outlived Frobisher’s, and it had outlived his own.

He had always believed. He had always hoped. But nothing compares to the joyful laugh that surprises Sixsmith himself as it escapes his throat, Frobisher rolling into his arms and tangling them in silky sheets. For a moment, he remembers: that fateful morning, before the knock on the door had come to shake them from their reverie, to shake up everything, and Sixsmith had thought to himself, _If only it could stay like this forever._ He strokes his fingers over Frobisher’s lips; Frobisher’s lips move against his fingertips. _Je t’aime_ , Frobisher murmurs, the French on his tongue still more musical, more fluid, than Sixsmith’s ever was. He cups Frobisher’s chin and pulls him down until their mouths meet. He tastes of honey and wine and summer salt air and breeze.

“I could do this forever,” he marvels, licking the words into Frobisher’s mouth. Sixsmith stares into his eyes, knowing his own are wide with wonder.

“We can,” Frobisher tells him, pulling back to straddle Sixsmith’s lap. Sixsmith’s hands circle his thin hips as Frobisher unbuttons the waistcoat. He tosses it aside with that old abandon, and quirks a grin down at him. Sixsmith returns the smile, as he always has, but now never more sure of anything in all of his lives.

And the stars shine down on them, close enough to touch, no longer just dead light. Their story begins again. It had never ended.


End file.
